An early use of the term was when the English critic Kenneth Tynan proposed an article to Playboy editor A.C. Spectorsky in late 1967 on the "Homosexual Mafia" in the arts.[2] Spectorsky declined, although he admitted that "culture hounds were paying homage to faggotismo as they have never done before". Playboy would run a panel on gay issues in April 1971.

Gradually, velvet came to be replaced with gay. The term may have gained wider social prominence after it was used in a 1995 Spy article and a 2002 Vanity Fair article, wherein Michael Ovitz, in an interview,[7] blamed the aforementioned group for his company's failures.[8]

More recently, comedian and TV hostBill Maher claimed (albeit without evidence): "I think there is a gay mafia. I think if you cross them, you do get whacked. I really do."[9]

Lavender Mafia has also been used to refer to a supposed faction within the leadership and clergy of the Roman Catholic Church that allegedly advocates the acceptance of homosexuality within the Church and its culture.[11] In 2013 Pope Francis claimed there was a "gay lobby" within the Vatican in remarks during a meeting held in private with Catholic religious from Latin America, and he was said to have promised to see what could be done to address the issue.[12] In July 2013, he responded directly to journalists' questions. He notably drew a distinction between the problem of lobbying and the sexual orientation of people: "If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?" "The problem", he said, "is not having this orientation. We must be brothers. The problem is lobbying by this orientation, or lobbies of greedy people, political lobbies, Masonic lobbies, so many lobbies. This is the worse problem."[13][14]